This video is about the Summer of Service in the Sacramento City Unified School District. Where young people got the opportunity to do hands on projects rather than sitting in their classrooms reading a book! The SCUSD Summer of Service was an exciting 6-week program that gave youth the privilege of helping out in their community by providing youth with service learning opportunities addressing environmental and disaster preparedness.

“Building Healthy Communities” is a video created by the California Endowment to showcase youth driven community media projects throughout California. The program also includes clips from right here in Sacramento County by a 13 year old with a flip camera during the Martin Luther King Celebration March and a little editing help from a community member. Sit back and enjoy what is going on statewide and at Access Sacramento’s “Neighborhood News Bureaus” in South Sacramento.

Well what do you say about a Martin Luther King, Jr. parade? You read about it in the newspaper or watch it on the evening news; but its nothing like being here on location and watching the people, and especially the young people. Then you realize what it means to them. I’m emotionally connected to what I see at this Martin Luther King parade in Sacramento, California, this morning of January Seventeenth, two thousand eleven.

As you drive upon the marching route on Martin Luther King Boulevard, you start noticing all the balloons that are being put in place on strings, on poles and trees by the young people, and the colors of the balloons are red, white and blue; and block after block there are more and more young people; and more and more red, white and blue balloons are being hung from every conceivable place and it doesn’t really strike you as to what is going on inside you emotionally. Suddenly, I can remember the marches in the South, in Detroit up Woodward Avenue, in Chicago and D.C. back in the sixties; I can remember hearing Stevie Wonder and all the concerts where he sung that song, “Happy Birthday”. I can remember hearing him sing this very song at a concert in the Cow Palace in So. San Francisco and can see the faces of the people as they filed out of the arena to their cars in the parking lots and some as they walked down the hill, still singing the words to the song.

The song was written in 1981 by Stevie Wonder in the campaign to have MLK’s birthday become a national holiday. Stevie was one just one of the many artist and people from all over America and all over the world who promoted such a holiday.

Now here in 2011, it amazes me to be out here marching in Sacramento among all these people. The full emotional impact of it all hits you, and I find myself remembering why this day means so much. So, the next time there is an event about something you feel passionate about, my suggestion is get out there and participate, it could change you. It changed me.